"Lucky Me" (2013) by Sachi Parker is quite a candid account of Sachi's life - including her bitter-sweet recollections of her life almost exclusively with her father (Steve Parker) and his mistress in Japan. These early times without her famous mother's presence - and who's general attitude to her only daughter seems closer to neglect than loving, emotional support - unless you call it "tough love". It also sets the tone for their relationship over rest of her life. Of course Shirley MacLaine has always cultivated herself as a "tough dame" in a tough business and it is not hard to argue with that given her sucess. It also squares with other actors and directors general impression of MacLaine.

From there we move on to Sachi's teen and young adulthood as she seeks to develop her own identity - including the required bed-hopping common to the 1980's sexual revolution - featuring a couple of years as a QUANTAS flight attendant and her first marriage in the Oz Outback. Then back to America re-uniting in some small degree with her mom and attempting to forge a career in TV/Film. That she gained critical acclaim in a Japanese film production of a well-loved children's book "The Witch of the West is Dead" was an important turning point in Sachi's personal understanding that she DID have what it took to be successful in Entertainment or whatever else she wanted to achieve - but then she mistakenly thought her own mother would naturally help her with that goal - and was bitterly disappointed to discover otherwise. It appears that was a major turning point in their ongoing relationship - perhaps not resolved even now. And who could blame her.

Is this a special Hollywood form of Munchausen Syndrome? It sort of reminds me of the parental alienation suffered by Bill Hudson - ex-husband of actress Goldie Hawn and the father of their daughter Kate - who remains estranged from his children by her. Is such alienation/estrangement a necessary part of parent/child identity formation in extreme sucess? Apple founder Steve Jobs never reconciled with his father after his parents split - and there are numerous examples of such parental alienation/estrangement in every walk of life.

As one follows Sachi's early family life one becomes aware how Shirley MacLaine seemed quite aware she was sacrificing her daughters upbringing to achieve fame & fortune in the Entertainment Industry. The title "Lucky Me!" gains a special irony as it links to her mothers 1995 tell-all biography "My Lucky Stars" which we discover presented different and contradictory accounts than had comforted Sachi as a child - and which end up seeming just cruel, self-serving fictions. It also included the obvious admission of her "open marriage" with Sachi's father Steve Parker - but not before Sachi disclosed how "open" it was to MacLaine - leading to some rather disturbing conclusions about exactly what her father was - a wastrel, charlatan or just a common flim-flam man - and if he was indeed her actual biological father at all - or just an astral manifestation dreamt-up by her mother.

Instead, I think Sachi Parker found that she - unlike her famous mom - was formed by her experiences to be almost the polar opposite of her parents - warm, caring, sexy, constantly seeking parental validation (or whatever was the emotional equivalent) open to exploiting her show-biz genes but even more excited and empowered by motherhood. That is as far from modern Feminist cant as one could get. Also, in describing her regret over her only abortion she refers to the near-spiritual revelation she experienced after she felt she had conceived Arin, her daughter:

"That night is vivid in my memory: my husband and I had made love around midnight, and now it was around 4:30 in the morning. I was in a half-awake, half-asleep state, when quite suddenly a beautiful, indescribable feeling of love, happiness, and peace washed over me. Some kind of being, a female being - an angel, perhaps - had ntered my body, and I felt transformed and transfigured, and suffused with great serenity." p251

I suppose the lesson for Sachi Parkers life is that women can not "have it all" - but hard choices lead to tough families - and not all are so "lucky" to have to lived thorough them. In general it reaffirmed my conviction that most Hollywood stars are not fit to be parents - and in that - are not too different than the rest of us human beings - in that we are all ourselves reformed by the parenting experience to be more than just "a sum of parts".

Sachi makes the wonderful analogy between a traditional Japanese Zen Garden arrangement of 15 stones called karesansui - where all are very carefully placed so that one can not see them all at the same time.

"That's how it is with people and relationships. There's always that fifteenth stone that you can't see but you know its there. .... You can never see a person or relationship or a life whole. There are to many angles." p342

Friday, 15 May 2015

South Korean intelligence reports had several nice and executions of top North Korean officials under the regime of Kim Jiang and ... the most recent the country's defence Minister Hong Myung told ... Mr Zhang was reportedly killed by TNT aircraft fire in front of an audience of hundreds for treason ... including falling asleep during an event attended by can jump in and satellite images of published in a report last month by the Committee for human rights in North Korea ... showing area fifty miles north of Pyongyang ... it believes is where the public execution of several high level officials light anti aircraft missiles has taken place it matches the location where South Korea's intelligence service claims ... Mr Tang was killed South Korea claims that Mr can has been on a leadership courage and ordered the execution and fifteen other top officials in the first few months of this year among them to vice ministers who are said to have been killed for complaining about Mr. Kim's leadership ... and members of the hossy Orchestra Sorkin's ex girlfriend was said to be up reform are the most high-profile execution under Mr Kam occurred in December twenty thirteen when he killed his uncle Tom some tacked on charges of Chase and soon after Mr Johns top two lieutenants I said to have also met their death in front of anti aircraft weapons reports of executions are often impossible to verify in the world's most secretive nation and North Korea has in the past publicly denied claims and executions by South Korean intelligence ... even as recent urge is to experts say it could be a sign Mr can is insecure about his position and trying to exert his authority ...

Sunday, 1 March 2015

Late Christopher Hitchen's dismisses appeasement of radical Islam over "offending" cartoons done in 2006 - and were only republished by a handful of truly principled media outlets including Charlie Hebdo.

Sunday, 22 February 2015

Ezra has bounced back as I expected with a most entertaining and informative (and tentative/evolving) internet presence called Rebel Media (http://www.therebel.media) and so far (Feb 22) it's YouTube Channel has over 1,800 subs.

I am hoping for many more - in fact I want to see over 10,000 subs within 21 days - and then I want all of these subscribers to pledge to pay $10/mth for the next year. That should be a good start only 30 days after Sun News "set".

However, I neglected to give a shout-out to all the former "camera" staff/reporters/journalists who made Sun such a great service to right-wing voters and conservative citizens - some of whom have been absence for some time.

Most revealing was Levants criticism of Kay on learning that he "moonlighted" in ghost-writing Justin Trudeau's mandatory, pre-election vanity book. I believe this fact was probably why Kay is no longer an Editor at the National Post.

Sunday, 1 February 2015

Since the terrible Charlie Hebdo massacre the issues of Islamic Jihad, Religious Blasphemy and Freedom of Speech have been very much front and center in the media - in particular the stubborn refusal of the MSM to understand their role (see previous post).

Columnist Mark Steyn has been a prominent advocate of protecting our freedoms since he was charged under the Canadian Human Rights Commission with a "hate crime" along with popular media commentator Ezra Levant (well documented in Levant's book "Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights").

He was speaking about this topic in Toronto at an Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) show featuring pornographic cartoonist Art Spiegelman. The topic was Provocation and Transgression - when the counter-culture has overturned normative mainstream culture (ie "we are all rebels now?"). Steyn ends with observation that "once all the soft targets are gone, the hard targets hit back".